Our mission is to find new ways of unlocking the potential of teachers throughout Africa. Through our work in Ghana and Uganda, we are proud to work alongside governments at local and national levels to drive excellence in Africa’s classrooms and support the next generation.
Global Teacher Prize and National Teacher Prizes
We are very proud to celebrate the best teaching across Africa through our Global Teacher Prize and our support for National Teacher Prizes in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan.
Peter Tabichi from rural Kenya was crowned the Global Teacher Prize 2019 winner. Peter is a science teacher and Franciscan Brother who gives away 80% of his monthly income to help the poor. His dedication, hard work and passionate belief in his student’s talent has led his poorly-resourced school in remote rural Kenya to emerge victorious after taking on the country’s best schools in national science competitions.
At the 2018 Global Education and Skills Forum, we announced a new partnership with the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, which will improve the skills of thousands of school leaders across the country.
The partnership built on our work in Ghana and will provide all in-service and aspiring school leaders with the skills to manage their schools more effectively. The programme, funded by the Global Partnership for Education and implemented by the Varkey Foundation, included collecting and analysing data to ensure all students receive a good education, wherever they attend school.
Policy and research
New research is vital in understanding the challenges unique to many of the regions in sub-Saharan Africa. The research we commission maps the attitudes of young people and parents and provides analysis of the social status of teachers throughout Africa.
Data from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda allows us to address governments and the international community and helps shape the work we do in these regions.
We also bring together groups of like-minded people, from top leaders and thinkers represented in our Atlantis Group to our Global Teacher Prize Ambassador community, to improve education for young people.
Programmes
Through our Challenge Fund, we supported early-stage ideas that have big potential to change the future of education. In Africa, this includes Teach for Uganda, a project designed to end education inequality, and Teach for Ghana, which places promising university graduates and young professionals as teachers in high-need communities.
Our programmes were also designed to radically improve education for girls. Using satellite technology to deliver interactive lessons, our Making Ghanaian Girls Great! project, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, has significantly boosted literacy and numeracy among some of the country’s most vulnerable and marginalised girls.
We also reached over 10% of teachers in Uganda via our Instructional Leadership Training Programme (ILTP). Of all school with with leaders that have completed the programme, 87% are rated as either good or outstanding.